Queen Bee Air Specialties has been in business for 45 years, and owned by the Kemper family for 33 years. Queen Bee has air tanker (SEAT) contracts with both national and state agencies. In addition, they have been an authorized Air Tractor Dealer since 1984, sell Air Tractor parts, and perform maintenance services on Air Tractors. Information on Queen Bee's pilot flight training program may be found here.
Queen Bee's air tanker fleet consists of nine AT-802's, all of which are type III air tankers. Tankers are classified into four types based on retardant capacity (in gallons). A type III tanker has a capacity of 800 to 1,799 gallons of retardant (or suppressant). See page 52 of the Interagency Aerial Supervision Guide for more information on tanker classification. More information on Queen Bee's AT-802's see their web page on air tanker operations.
I've had the privilege of chatting with a couple of the staff at Queen Bee about their operations and the AT-802. They have been generous with their time and in providing me with some photographs, including the ones that I included here.
Thanks to my friends at Queen Bee for the photos!
Stay tuned for my next post where I will revisit specifications of the AT-802.
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